Posts By
Halle Kiefer

Taking a break from helping the homeless and spending millions on billowing harem pants, Russell Brand continued his transformation into a hairier Mother Teresa last week by staging a walkout at L.A.’s Golden Bridge yoga studio. No, it wasn’t to support a free Tibet or protest the use of non-organic sage in the community cleansing ceremonies. Instead, Russell rallied his fellow yoga students to storm out of class in support of his yoga teacher friendTej Kaur Kalsa because the studio wouldn’t let her out of her contract. Yes, we know it’s not as sexy a cause as we would have hoped, but still. This is the same guy from Get Him To The Greek! Baby steps, people.

Let’s be real, shall we? Some of the Mean Girls actors have moved on to better things. Amanda Seyfried has literally blown up in the past six months (well, not literally), Rachel McAdams is firmly on the A-list and Tina Fey is now writing a Mean Girls musical with her musician husband Jeff Richmond, which is pretty much the pinnacle of human achievement. “I’m trying to develop it with my husband, who does all the music for 30 Rock and I think Paramount’s onboard,” Fey told E! at the SAG Awards. After gushing about her love of Mariah Carey, Tina added, “Maybe she can play Amy Poehler’s part in the musical.” Oh wow, Mariah singing “You Girls Keep Me Young” with a Chihuahua chewing up her bazooms would go perfectly with the show-stopping number “The Limit Does Not Exist” and the Unfriendly Black Hotties choir. (Yes, we’ve been writing this musical in our heads for the past eight years. What’s your point?)

There’s a time and a place for everything, but rarely is the time “right before the SAG awards” and the place “the red carpet” for discussing criminal accusations of sexual battery. We’re guessing Glee‘s Mark Salling would disagree, of course, seeing as how he addressed a new lawsuit against him with E!’s Ross Matthews before the awards ceremony last night. “You hear about fraudulent lawsuits all the time, [but] ’til it happens to you, you really don’t grasp what it does, not to just you but your family,” the Glee star explained. “You want the legal process to happen as fast as possible, but it takes time. I want the chance to defend myself — and I will, vigorously.” Do you think that felt weird to talk about with Nicole Kidman standing five feet away? We imagine it’d be weird to talk about anything with Nicole Kidman standing five feet away.

Apparently the Glee star has been accused by his ex-girlfriend Roxanna Gorzela of a variety of horrible things: allegedly forcing her to have sex without a condom, allegedly grabbing her and allegedly shoving her to the ground where she struck her head. The only thing more awkward than talking about lawsuits and crime on the red carpet is to talk about them on Twitter, which Salling, um, also did. “You kind of have to learn as you go,” Salling said yesterday about dealing with the accusations, “but like anything else you have to stay positive and count on the people that do know you and love you.” And your publicist, who we’re assuming was standing off-camera, frantically waving at Mark not to talk about it right before the awards ceremony.

Well, this is embarrassing. No, we’re not referring to our scrapbook of wedding plans for our fantasy Bradley Cooper wedding. You know we spent a lot of time and effort on that. We’re referring to producer/director J.J. Abram‘s awkward casting rumor gaffe. It all began when the Star Trek director claimed Bradley Cooper was psyched to potentially play Lance Armstrong in the film based on the upcoming book Cycle of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong. “[Cooper] sent me an email and we’ve been talking,” Abrams told Entertainment Tonight. Seemed reasonable enough (both Lance and Bradley have a similar intensity and devastating cheekbones), until we found out that J.J. hadn’t…actually…mentioned to Bradley that he was supposed to be interested. Man, this is just like when we sent out the invites to our wedding to Bradley Cooper with out technically meeting him first. We feel you, J.J.!

Considering how quickly the movie rumor mill churns, it’s kind of surprising stuff like this doesn’t happen more often. Seeing as how Abrams directed Cooper in Alias in the earlier ’00s, J.J. was probably just getting everyone psyched for Bradley’s potential role in the film and he forgot to play one important call. “Oh my god, that’s so nuts!” the Silver Linings Playbook star clarified to Access Hollywoodabout the rumors of his involvement. “I was in Manchester, doing the BBC morning show… I had no idea what [the interviewer] was talking about. I didn’t even know that J.J. has the rights, I had no idea. I don’t know anything about it.” Oh, maybe J.J. got one of those Google bot emails from Bradley’s account and just assumed he was in to play Lance? That seems like a reasonable assumption, right?

Tonight’s Screen Actors Guild Awards were not as tipsy-casual as the Golden Globes nor as formal as the Oscars almost certainly will be, but they were still chock full of funny, touching quotes from everyone from Amy Poehler to Tina Fey to Dick Van Dyke. And while it technically was not “out loud” and therefore does not count as a quote, did everyone see Bryan Cranston‘s adorable daughter mouth “I love you, Dad” while he was onstage? After we finished dying over how cute that was, we rounded up all our favorite bon mots from tonight’s ceremony for your reading pleasure:

Uh, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo? We don’t really know you or what you’re about or understand your role in the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend saga. Heck, we barely understand any part of the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend saga. We do, however, know Dr. Phil and as such we are cringing at your decision to sit down with the good doctor to discuss your side of the story. We know you want to respond to Manti’s Katie Couric interview, but dude, did you not see Dr. Phil’s interview with Dina Lohan last fall? Where Lindsay Lohan‘s mom came across as defensive, evasive and potentially inebriated? Based on that interview alone, we can say with some confidence that Dr. Phil is not the person you want to sit down with if you don’t want to run the risk of seeming like a total nutburger. He will hang you out to dry if you get weird.

We are dying at what an adorable little fancy man Katy Perry makes in drag. The singer stopped by Ellen today to celebrate Ellen DeGeneres‘ 55th birthday (did Ellen make some kind of deal with an evil wizard to look that good?), and to channel her inner dude in an amazing three-piece suit, toupee and mustache. We could honestly watch Katy dance her silly gentleman dance all day, but we had to take a break to round up the other female celebs from Lady Gaga to Gwyneth Paltrow to Amanda Bynes who look amazing in drag. And by “amazing,” we mean “like Daniel Radcliffe with a weird, sparse goatee.” Seriously, take a look.

Oooo, our faces are as red as our infected Spanx line! (Thank you, Tina Fey, for informing the world about that dire affliction.) As if it wasn’t enough for her to defy both gravity and cultural perceptions of beauty by becoming hotter as she enters her forties, Jennifer Lopez obviously wore a dress with butt cut-outs to the Parker premiere last night just to demonstrate how she doesn’t need the four pairs of overlapping Spanx most leading ladies wear on the red carpet. Or, uh, any underwear whatsoever. Jeez, we get it, Jennifer Lopez. Your body is its own Spanx.

We’re stuffing our jacket pockets with Kleenex as we speak! Variety announced today that Kate Winslet is currently in talks with Divergent director Neil Burger to joing the upcoming film based on the YA novel of the same name. While there’s no word as to what role the Academy Award-winning actress might take, based on what fans are squealing online we’re guessing Winslet would be awesome as Natalie Prior, wise, protective mother of Shailene Woodley‘s teen protagonist Tris. Alternately, Winslet could potentially be eying the role of Jeanine Matthews, the cunning, war-mongering leader of the book’s Erudite political faction. In either case…well, we won’t spoil the entire movie, but let’s just say there’s a reason Veronica Roth’s book series is described as “dystopian.” Things do not pan out for all the film’s major players.

The casting news comes just a few weeks after word that Alex Pettyfer, Lucas Till and Jeremy Irvine are still in the running to play Four, fellow future dweller and romantic interest to Woodley’s Tris. What do you think? Is Winslet destined to play Natalie? Are there any names you’d like to throw in the hat before the cast is confirmed (knowing of course that we are the only ones who will be reading from said hat)?

The fact we’re even writing about Sylvester Stallone‘s personal life lets you know this story is going to be jacked. Our skin just crawled right out of our cubicle after learning that the Bullet to the Head actor allegedly paid his half-sister Toni-Ann Filiti millions of dollars in blackmail to hush up her accusations of “claims for personal injury, including physical injury” allegedly perpetrated by Stallone. According to the New York Post, in 1987 the Expendables II star paid Filiti $2 million dollars, with an agreement to maintain a $50,000 annual trust and a $16,666.66 per month stipend in the future. Is anyone else even more weirded out that the Number of the Beast happens to be in the stipend amount? Just us? Why would anyone ever pay such a bizarre amount, even in blackmail money?

Now, we know what you’re thinking: don’t you need some kind of evidence to blackmail someone? If someone called us demanding money in exchange for silence about abusing our half-sister, we would point out we don’t have any half-siblings and hang up. According to Stallone’s mom, however, the story is kind of par for the course for the now deceased Filiti. “This was nothing more than a shakedown,” Jaqueline Stallone told the Post, claiming Filiti was a drug addict attempting to finagle money out of her rich relative. “Toni-Ann was on 65 Oxycontin pills a day, and she threatened Sylvester. A drug addict will do anything. When Sylvester became famous, she didn’t have to hook. He was trying to help her. He caved in,” she alleges. A drug addict? Oh yes, there it is: the only thing as sad as if her allegations against Sylvester Stallone turned out to be true.